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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29267442">Ghost of a Fish in the Chequered Halls</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/pseuds/Beatrice_Sank'>Beatrice_Sank</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Piranesi - Susanna Clarke, Twin Peaks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A modest extension of the House's map, Crossovers &amp; Fandom Fusions, Gen, Journey, People being haunted, Places being haunted, Self-Reflection, Statues, Tapes and mates, Trauma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 22:53:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,109</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29267442</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/pseuds/Beatrice_Sank</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sarah,<br/>It’s February 14th, and I’m entering the Nine-Hundred-and-Sixty-Third Western Hall, a two-days walk from the Hall devoted to the Moon. I’ve never heard so much echo in my life."</p><p>In the distant Western Halls, beyond the Corridors of Echoes, Piranesi meets a ghost.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Chocolate Box - Round 6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Corridors of Echoes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts">laughingpineapple</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"And One will contain an Infinity of Rooms that no Door will ever limit."</p><p>Paris Ormskirk, <em>Revelations of Thirty-Six Other Worlds</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The click of a tape recorder, echoing in vast marbled halls.</p><p> </p><p>“Sarah.”</p><p>*</p><p>After a couple of months, she got him one of the oldest tape recorder from her station, feeling that Matthew was becoming impatient with his memory losses and his journal was threatening to get out of hands – he was trying to take notes everywhere, whenever the shape of a statue loomed a bit too large over the shape of a passer-by, when he found himself under an arch, or in the presence of dripping water. They figured it together: recording helped when he was recognizing too much of the world at once, when the coherence and the wonder assaulted him in the middle of a garden, a museum, or even – and that time she had to put a stop to it and ask him to think, if he could, to put Matthew’s mind to what he was actually saying – a zoo.</p><p>It was never her intention to actually listen to them – the tapes. Tapes she felt contained so much of the secret emotions that weaved Matthew Rose Sorensen and Piranesi together. It would have been monstrous, in a sense, to eavesdrop. Unbearable. She would have shattered. Notes of it had perhaps transpired in some of his later interviews with Angharad Scott – but Angharad Scott was made of a different wood it seemed, with her pleated skirts and her oolong tea and her smiles that carried the sadness of a hundred lost lives.</p><p>“It’s February 14<sup>th</sup>, and I’m entering the Nine-Hundred-and-Sixty-Third Western Hall, a two-days walk from the Hall devoted to the Moon I told you about in my first tape. I’ve never heard so much echo in my life – maybe you’ll be able to hear it too but I am unsure of the exact way those devices work and of what they can capture. As Matthew would say, ‘there isn’t such a great divide as we imagine between magic and technology, and I don’t know on which side I’d rather stand’. In my opinion, he would rather be here, for now. I am now fully convinced we both needed to take this trip.”</p><p>She suggested he took the holiday, but only because she knew Matthew didn’t trust himself to evoke the possibility. He had been back for five months, and though they regularly visited the Halls together, it was always with a watch in hand and a fully charged cellphone - Piranesi’s delight in anything vaguely technological was always enchanting. Sometimes he went away for a full day by himself. But it was hard on him, terrifying in a way she couldn't truly understand.</p><p>He had dreams where he went back to the House to be turned into a statue. His account was disturbingly precise. He felt himself split in two parts: one that was stuck in a marbled armchair, head desperately turned toward the sky; and one that was bending toward the first to speak into his ear. What the part had to say was something so important the mouth that was trying to say it was bowing under its weight, and just when the words were going to be said, just when the other part was going to hear them, the mouth turned into stone and chocked on its secret. Surprisingly, the dream didn't stop there; instead, he remembered waiting, waiting for what felt like years, like only statues know how to.</p><p>She trusted in Matthew more than he trusted in himself. After all, he was able to surface almost on his own in the heart of the House, and never let himself drown completely. She pointed out he should perhaps allow himself to go and explore for a longer period: the winter holidays were approaching, he could take a week. It would be a very mundane thing to do – most people set off to the Alps to sky, or visited their aunt in Dorset. Perhaps this particular aunt was huge and labyrinthine and the produce of cosmic harmony, but in the end Dorset was still Dorset. He could take walks along the Jurassic coast and enjoy the fresh air.</p><p>*</p><p>“Never before have I seen Halls that looked so much like Corridors. Imagine a succession of Chequered Rooms, each resembling the others almost exactly: elongated proportions, broken Statues that appear to have been forgotten in the corners, faces to the wall, and Windows that have been sealed with some sort of rock. I was unable to identify it, and was too eager not to linger to examine it with the torch, but it felt incredibly smooth to the touch.</p><p>After a while – it must have been the third room of this kind, but I am unsure – I realized there was a weight pressing on my chest. It took me some time to understand where the feeling came from but eventually, as I tripped over some broken piece of marble and provoked a great Clattering that reverberated for a full minute along the rooms (I checked the watch you gave me for Christmas), I was able to identify the source of my unease. From the moment I had set foot in those strange Halls, I had been hearing the Echo of my own breathing. I suppose – though it’s really Matthew who hazarded it – that my body had progressively come to the conclusion that I was lacking oxygen, since the Halls sounded like I was gaping for air, breathing through the entire Corridor.</p><p>After that, I did the exercises Doctor Rosenfield taught me, and by the sixth room I was almost feeling like myself again. At that point, I was sufficiently recovered to become curious about the particular property of those Halls, and started experimenting. I dropped a pebble, creating another Great Commotion; crumpling the wrapping paper of a cereal bar produced a sound like a hundred seagull were taking flight, as if scared by something (perhaps by the Great Commotion I had provoked with the pebble); and the pressing of this recorder’s button gave me the feeling that a massive door was opening somewhere in the distance, and then closing again. I called my names, and yours, to see if anything would happened (nothing did). I didn’t dare to call the Other’s name, though. I was sure the entire House was able to hear me. So I whispered prayers to It, and apologized for disturbing Its Peace after such a long absence.”</p><p>*</p><p>She often suspected parts of Matthew hated the House. Hated it like a lab rat must hate the maze in which we insist to make him run. But Piranesi… Piranesi could only hate the House in the way the Minotaur hated the Labyrinth. And though these days rats were mostly manufactured for the mazes, the Labyrinth had been built around the Minotaur.</p><p>The recording had a strange reverberating quality to it. She wasn’t entirely sure how the tapes were delivered to the Entrance she was most familiar with, but as the last three had been dropped off under the statues along with broken scallop shells and curled feathers, she suspected he might have entrust them to some bird. Even in London, birds seemed to take a special interest in Matthew – often to Matthew’s embarrassment. It wasn’t only seagulls, who made difficult for him to walk near Billingsgate market; pigeons and passerines always gathered in his path, and sometimes perched on his shoulder or his head. At his parents’ house in Essex, owls wouldn’t leave him alone.</p><p>Piranesi had been very enthusiastic, once it was decided that he should go and spend some time away to explore new Halls: he was adamant that he should share his progresses with her as he went, stating that the tapes would be like postcards as well as a useful testimony to anything he might discover. Matthew must have thought it was a good way to make sure he would actually return: they had never discussed it so directly, but she knew he trusted her to come and look for him if he forgot himself somewhere between tides. She did not feel the weight of the responsibility as heavily as she should have; in truth she almost revelled in it. And it was good of him to leave her a thread to follow.</p><p>She took another sip of coffee. That day the sky had the colour of lead, and she wondered if she could have discerned the lines of Ionic capitals and painted coffers in the scraps of clouds that lingered there if she had tried long enough. Sighing, she pressed “Play” and watched as the last tape of the day slowly began to unroll.</p><p>*</p><p>“Sarah, it is February, 15<sup>th</sup>, and today I met a ghost.”</p><p>Coffee was spilled. Not a lot, she could never allow herself to. But some.</p><p>“Please don’t be alarmed. I realize of course, as Matthew would say, that by asking that I’m actually pointing the way toward it, and I’m sorry. I am fine, and there is every chance that I will continue to be. The situation is more fascinating that it is potentially dangerous, and Matthew is inclined to say that in any case we have the advantage of knowing the territory – I disagree with him on that: the territory is never ours to know completely, we are but the humble children of the House.</p><p>But I digress. I meant to tell you about the ghost. Please note that when I say “a ghost”, I do not mean that I met with a transparent person who had complains about the circumstances of their untimely death. It is true that the Ghost, if you look at him closely, does present a strange agitation in the peripheries of his body, a thin border of uncertainty separating his suit from the world. Still that is not what I meant by calling him a Ghost. But I feel I should first explain how I came to be in his Presence.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. A Fish in the Pond of the Thousandth Vestibule</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I was just out of the Corridors of Echoes, and had reached a rather small Hall (or at least it seemed smallish after miles of unending corridors). In truth it looked more like a Vestibule, but it was styled in a way I have never observed anywhere else in the House.</p><p>The whole room was tiled in small terracotta squares of blue and green, with interlacing patterns of the two colours decorating the walls with a great regularity. They continued up to the ceiling, which looked as if it had once consisted in a sort of dome, but was now entirely collapsed into a gaping, round hole. Thick strips of mists were coming through it, blocking the view to the room above entirely. The air was heavy, and I couldn’t shake off the impression that a great Storm was on its way, which was absurd: Storms are rare in the House, they only occur during summer and in the Upper Halls, where you can get caught in a cloud of electricity if you’re not careful and ignore the way the fine hairs on your forearms raise to announce it.</p><p>From the edges of the hole, drips of water occasionally fell into a large depression in the ground, causing a regular sound that had captured my attention from afar. It almost looked like a font, since after all the room had a ceremonial air of faded importance, its colours too dull now to evoke anything grander than an antique bathroom.</p><p>But as I approached, it became clear that the dip was only natural and the produce of time, a pond of collapsed tiles that probably held water for a while before it leaked into the Drowned Halls and continued its course. My senses were perhaps impaired after walking through the corridors for such a long time, but I felt like a could hear the dripping sound echo, not in the room but inside my head. With each drop I became more curious, and didn’t stop until I was leaning over the surface. The water had a peculiar tint, like pale lilac flowers. But it didn’t smell like anything I knew, and the air on my tongue only tingled with a metallic taste.</p><p>I was trying to see the bottom of the pond, to find the breaking point through which the drops would be able to escape, when I saw it. The silhouette of a man, looking back at me from under the water. I knelt, and the reflection became clearer: I could see wide eyes in a pale face, like something I could recognize. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t even surprised. I felt a great sense of calm descending upon me, as if I had just heard the first notes of a tune I knew by heart but never thought to hum out loud.</p><p>And, as I examine the apparition’s body, I noticed that he wasn’t in fact alone in the pond: at least two other silhouettes were visible at his side, but somewhat blurred. Watching them I came to realize there were many others behind them, a multiplicity of faces, all of them pale, refracting like those shadow puppets a child might move around, hoping that the fake, aggrandised monsters will disperse the real ones, those who don’t need light to exist.</p><p>It was strange, Sarah. The more I looked at the first face, the more I felt like there was someone standing right behind me, breathing down my neck, to push perhaps, or simply to watch me be.</p><p>Though I couldn’t avert my eyes, I knew there couldn't be anyone else, and after a moment I decided that it was just the two of us for now, that person in the pond and me, so I plunged my hand into the water and fished myself a ghost.</p><p> </p><p>It was hard to drag him out: he didn’t pull, exactly, but he never seemed to want to help either. And when finally I was done, I could only observe that he wasn’t at all wet, only stunned. His shirt and mustard jacket were entirely dry, but they looked at least two sizes too big for him. The ghost blinked at me.</p><p>“Hello,” I said, pressing the hand I was still holding in mine in a semblance of greeting, “I’m Piranesi. Are you lost?”</p><p>He gazed at me in silence for a while, before answering:</p><p>“Lost.”</p><p>It was as I suspected. You see, before I met you, I would have been stunned to find anyone else in the House, apart from me and the Other of course. But now, I could only wonder how it had not happened before. The House is the world, but it is also its gaps, and you can only expect all sort of things to go through it. Besides, the Ghost wasn’t entirely a a person. I wasn’t sure how he could count in my system.</p><p>He pointed a hesitant finger at his chest.</p><p>“Dougie.”</p><p>“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s good” (to be frank, I didn’t expect him to be able to name himself), “it will make things more friendly.”</p><p>Then, because I saw him looking up and gaping at the room and its broken ceiling:</p><p>“This is the House. I suppose you somehow came here through the wrong passage, for it looks like you’re expected elsewhere. But don’t worry about it.”</p><p>How I knew those things, I cannot tell you. But the Ghost didn’t seem shocked to hear it.</p><p>“Worry about it,” he only said.</p><p>I would have let go of his hand, but he was still holding it, like he was afraid he would immediately fall back into the pond.</p><p>“You’ll see,” I tried to reassure him, “the House will provide for you.”</p><p>And then, since I felt the Ghost wasn’t perhaps as aware of the ways of the world as I was:</p><p>“The House is Beautiful, and you will revel in its Splendour. For a moment, at least.”</p><p>I suddenly felt a wave of sadness overcoming me.</p><p>“Then it will help you return to your true destination.”</p><p>It was as if all beauty had dispersed, as if, as I was praising the perfection of the House, all I could see was bleak, cold stone and indifferent statues.</p><p>The Ghost must have noticed my change of mood, for he pressed my hand back, and made to walk away from the water. Then he looked around, as if he was rediscovering the room entirely, and following his gaze, I noticed something that had totally escaped me.</p><p>There was no statue in this Vestibule.</p><p>Not a single one.</p><p>I grew excited again, for I had never observed such a thing before. No statues! It was a disturbing sight, as if the House had been bared from its most essential attributes.</p><p>I was about to share my astonishment with the Ghost, but he was busy feeling his face and hair with his free hand, as he walked toward the next Hall.</p><p>Just before we reached the Doorway, he stopped, and turning toward me he reached to touch my cheek, and then my jaw, my forehead, and finally my nose. I didn’t flinch, because it was a curious touch, an attempt at conversation, just like when a seagull snaps its beak at me on its way back from the Drowned Halls.</p><p>“Destination,” he said, sounding perhaps a bit weary.</p><p> </p><p>Now I said I was going to explain what I meant by calling this person a Ghost. Mostly, I’m thinking of a person who is haunted. Matthew, specifically, is reminded of a body of work he read some years ago, a series of articles, but I can only remember the names: ‘Spivak, Aidoo, Fraiberg, Avery Gordon’, like a litany or a silly poem. I like how they sound. He didn’t expect to recognize the theory in someone in such a pure and luminous way, which goes to show that research is often more concrete than what is usually thought.</p><p>I remember the Other saying to me I was living – barely surviving, in fact – on metaphors. I believe he was saying it in jest, but he had a point, unknowingly. Metaphors have flesh too, but they’d rather have you eat in their hand.</p><p>And so, I considered this haunted person, the names Matthew remembered chanting inside my head, ‘Spivak, Aidoo, Fraiberg, Avery Gordon’, and this is when I decided that I needed to help him find his way back. The water was a dead end for now, and I wasn’t certain I wanted to leave him in the hands of the other silhouettes.</p><p>“Come,” I offered, moving under the Doorway. “I will show you the House.”</p><p> </p><p>We walked for a while together, and he wouldn’t let go of my hand, but I didn’t mind it. The Halls we crossed were rather dilapidated: the Statues were present again, but most of them were broken beyond recognition, or missed several limbs. I can only identify a few: a Man holding a Ladder and a Lantern, Three Women pouring Water from Large Vases, and a Faceless Child.</p><p>The Ghost dragged me in front of each, but he spent a long time observing the last one.</p><p>“Do you like it,” I asked politely, hoping to learn how he was enjoying the House so far. I was a bit sorry that we only came across ruined, empty rooms, not at all a good sample of the wonders the House could offer.</p><p>The Ghost only touched the top of the Statue’s Head, then made a catching gesture with his hand, closing it into a fist.</p><p>“It,” he whispered.</p><p>Eventually, we resumed our exploration.</p><p>Despite their advanced state of decay, several colonies of birds nested in those Halls. The Ghost was entirely enchanted by them: he walked among the nests, mouth open in delight, and responded to their cries with an enthusiasm I have rarely observed. While he waved at gannets who were extending their long white necks at him curiously, I noticed that the floor was covered with a layer of broken shells, some of which were still full. Taking advantage of the Ghost’s popularity with the birds, I gathered the uneaten food in my red plastic container without drawing attention to myself.</p><p> </p><p>After maybe a quarter of an hour, satisfied with my loot, I called back to him only to find him half-covered with a flock of puffins. His jacket wore traces of their little feet, and two of them were messing with his hair as if they intended to nestle there. He looked utterly happy.</p><p>“This way,” I called again, pointing at the next Hall, hoping it might be less crowded. “We can take a break under that pillar over there.”</p><p>He mimicked my gesture, pointing west, and made all the birds flew away in a confusion of wings. I took the Ghost’s hand back in mine, and congratulating him for fitting in so well, I went to find a quiet place to feed him.</p><p>Under the pillar of the One-Thousand-and-Tenth Western Hall, I fed him stolen mussels, oysters, and half a halibut I had caught the previous day. He seemed appreciative, even though he had all the trouble in the world opening the mussels, and I had to lend him a hand.</p><p>He kept looking at the ceiling in awe, which made me pay attention too: it was one of those painted skies you sometimes encountered in the most distant parts of the House: this one was a nightly landscape and showed not one, but two different moons, encircled by dots that were too yellow to convincingly represent stars. To say the truth – and it bothered me once more that those rooms were proving so disappointing, aesthetically speaking – the whole piece were rather crudely made, but I found after a moment that it was difficult to look away. There was something of a pattern, difficult to perceive at first but rather captivating, in the way the dots were aligned.</p><p>I must have let myself become too engrossed in this spectacle, for it took me some time to notice that the Ghost had stopped eating and was now eerily quiet. Dragging myself away from the fake sky, I found him starring at an open oyster in his palm. Inside of it, hidden in the bluish, quivering folds, laid a single pearl. It was of an unusual colour: shiny and yellow, almost golden, and surprisingly round. The Ghost had taken it between his thumb and index and was examining it intensely.</p><p>“Oh, that’s nice” I commented. “It happens, sometimes. You can keep it. It’s quite valuable in some places.”</p><p>The Ghost didn’t respond, but he clenched the pearl in his fist with a determined expression. I was hoping he wouldn’t lose it on the way, and suggested that we resumed our walk, since we still had to find him a way out, and that painted ceiling made me uneasy. It was as if my eyes wanted to go back to contemplating it and would have been content to do so forever.</p><p>“Do not look up,” I said, taking his hand in mine again. “Sometimes we encounter Mysteries that are greater than us in the Halls, and we should leave them be. They're always interesting to discover,” I continued, thinking that I should make a note about that Hall in my next recording, “but I’ve never find any gratification in trying to decipher them.”</p><p>I was thinking about the Other now, not minding very much how the Ghost was reacting to what I was saying.</p><p>“On the contrary, I’m almost convinced that the House doesn’t want to be asked too many questions.”</p><p>There were days when I wondered if this wasn’t the reason why It had disposed of the Other.</p><p>“Thankful,” the Ghost said suddenly, in a tone of voice I will never forget.</p><p>I realized then that his hand wasn’t in mine any-more, and when I turned to look for him, I found that I was utterly alone.”</p><p> </p><p>The rolling of the player came to a stop, but Sarah didn’t immediately rise to rewind the tape. There was something in Piranesi’s tone that had shaken her a bit. She wasn’t sure what to think.</p><p>She remembered, when her father had died, how she kept dreaming that she was hugging herself, herself as a little girl that she could embrace until she would stop crying. Losing the House had been as hard on Piranesi as it had been on Matthew, but in a different way. And she didn’t know a lot about ghosts, but she occasionally heard stories at work, or even during questioning. There was a mother, once, who insisted she kept seeing her daughter climbing the stairs at night, up and down, ‘only her hair was different, you see, just the hair’. The daughter was, of course, long gone, but she sometimes thought about it.</p><p>*</p><p>It took a few days for the next tape to arrive. She wasn’t worried exactly, for Piranesi wasn’t due to return before the end of the week. Still, when she put it in her player, it was with some trepidation and a notebook in hand. She needed to try and draw a map of the new Halls, to see how long it would take her to go there.</p><p>“Sarah, yesterday the Ghost came back. Only, he had changed.</p><p>I didn’t comment at the time, but I think I ought to tell you that I was quite shaken by the first Ghost’s disappearance. It scared me in a way I have trouble explaining. Perhaps it was the fact that I wondered then if I had not created the whole encounter in my mind. But now that he is back, I feel more confident that it wasn’t me, but him who keeps losing his way and being one person in a room, and a different one in the next.</p><p>This Ghost has little to do with the first One. It is, in a way, a disappointment to me. I wish I could have spent more time with him. I think we would have enjoyed each other’s company. He had a familiarity to him. Perhaps because we both have been made.”</p><p> </p><p>There, Piranesi paused, and she raised to pause the tape too. If she was to listen to this, she would have to do it with something stronger than water. Or no, a cigarette. A cigarette was definitely needed.</p><p>In recent weeks, Matthew had had a few things to say about the birth of Piranesi – his fabrication, as he called it. He was very vehement, and it made her miserable to listen to him. But just before he decided to go on holiday, he had added a comment to his raging analysis, something about Piranesi’s name. Piranesi, the real one, was not a builder, he had explained, but a dreamer of buildings. He wasn’t interested in the heavy matter of goods, the value of things ripped from nature and bodies. He only dwelled in the vastness of halls, reproduced in a thousand printings. And Matthew said that, in spite of everything, he couldn’t help but like the name, even if it was a scar on his mind. He liked it, and despised its history. It could never be his only name, but it was one he still wanted to inhabit.</p><p>She had hoped going back to the House would help him balance things out. For years she had done everything she could to find Matthew; but it didn’t mean she was ready to lose Piranesi in exchange.</p><p> </p><p>“I didn't like this new Ghost much, at first. He acted as if the House was speaking to him, but I suspect he was lying, or at least pretending to understand what he was doing here. But I shouldn’t bore you with this, let me first explain how I met him, or rather how he met me.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Trees in the Porphyry Hall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“After the One-Thousand-and-Tenth Western Hall, I fear that I didn’t pay much attention to the rooms I walked through. When I looked around again, though, I saw that I was standing in another long room that closely resembled the Corridors of Echoes. Its walls had a reddish tint, terra-cotta maybe, and it was filled with Statues. Contrary to the broken ones I had seen with the Ghost, those Statues were all in perfect state, and beautifully made. In fact, I have rarely seen such quality of work in other Halls, except for my favourites.”</p><p>*</p><p>There was a light ‘click’, indicating the recorder had been paused, and then the recording resumed in a more business-like manner, as if the speaker intended to convey the importance of what he was describing.</p><p>“A List of the Statues I Found in the One-Thousand-and-Twenty-Sixth (?) Western Hall.</p><p>- a Statue of Woman holding a Branch to her Ear;</p><p>- a Statue of a Naked Woman, covering her Face with her Hands – it is unclear if She is crying, merely hiding, or wishing the world would go away. I say ‘naked’: it isn’t something I would usually mention, for all statues are scantily clothed, but this statue somehow looks more naked than the others;</p><p>- a Statue of Two Dancing Girls: their Heads are leaning in opposite directions, and their Arms are open as if to greet the Other. They look remarkably alike, but one is definitely older, although I only noticed it after a while.</p><p>- a Statue of a Handless Child. It seemed clear to me that this Child was supposed to be a girl. When I came across it, I thought of the Folded-Up Child, alone in her alcove in the wall, and felt sad again;</p><p>- a Statue of a Woman with a Quiver on her Back and an Arrow planted in her Left Shoulder. This is a great work of art (and Matthew’s favourite): the folds of her dress are extremely detailed, and the dress itself is styled quite differently from most of the Statues I know. Her right Arm is raised, and she presents the Back of her Hand to us. Her Fingers are long, and three of them (second, fourth and fifth) are almost completely folded.</p><p>I can’t help but notice all of these Statues are women. I thought perhaps you would make something of it.”</p><p>*</p><p>The recording paused again, but she had no time to think, for almost immediately Piranesi resumed his tale.</p><p>“I was just stepping out of the Hall of Statues when it happened. I was still distracted but I heard a light sound, some kind of buzzing perhaps, or maybe the distant, distorted whisper of the Ocean. And then, as I passed under the Doorway, someone walked into me. I would have ended up on the floor if he had not caught me swiftly. When I was able to look up and see who it was that seemed in such a hurry, I recognized the Ghost.”</p><p>The tone became more hesitant.</p><p>“When I say I recognized him – it’s difficult to explain. I knew I had seen him before: in the pond, behind the first Ghost, among all the shadows that stood there on the edges of each others. And he had that pale face, those wide eyes. Only, he wasn’t the same person: the light in his eyes was different, more eager, and he was dressed more smartly. He looked older, too; but now that I think about it, I can’t say why.</p><p>Obviously, he was astonished to find me there, as if I was the one who were intruding.</p><p>“What do you mean by going this way, sir,” he asked confidently. “Nothing good is brewing on this side of the world. But don’t fear, I believe I’m on the verge of a crucial advance here, if you would just...”</p><p>He was about to drag me back into the Hall of Statues, but I had already spent a long amount of time there and had no intention to return so soon.</p><p>“But that’s where I’m coming from,” I protested. “I want to see that Hall now: it looks...”</p><p>I tried to peak above his shoulder, but my sight was strangely blurred: all I could see was a reddish glow, coming through a cloud of darkness.</p><p>The new Ghost paused to consider this.</p><p>“You’re coming from there, you say? Well that’s unexpected.”</p><p>He frowned.</p><p>“It took me quite some time to go this far, and I’m pretty sure I almost have the answer. You see, it’s all in the stars: if you observe them long enough, and if you let your mind fully enter the sky, they will light the way like a map. It goes round in circles like a snail’s shell, and it might look like a dead-end, but the trained eye recognizes the final stages of the bodhisattva’s path of meditation<b>.</b> I believe us to be on the fifth ground now, so congratulations to you too.”</p><p>And then he smiled to me, apparently expecting me to rejoice. You will understand I was a bit shocked, and therefore not very reactive. After all, I had cause: it’s one thing to find a Ghost where there used to never be anyone else, but two Ghosts meant those Halls were becoming a bit crowded for my taste.</p><p>Nevertheless, Matthew was intrigued. He asked him:</p><p>“Excuse me, but how long have you been here?”</p><p>This utterly stopped the Ghost in his tracks. He blinked and looked at me as if he was just discovering me in front of his legs.</p><p>“Who spoke?” he muttered in confusion, his early confidence all but gone. He suddenly looked much younger. Much, much younger.</p><p>“It was Matthew,” I said more gently. “And I’m Piranesi. This is the House,” I added, trying to diplomatically convey that his original perceptions might be slightly off after all.</p><p>The Ghost’s face lighted up again in enthusiasm.</p><p>“Oh I see! Have I reached the lodge then?”</p><p>He looked at me more closely, his eyes lingering for the first time on my hair, in which I had tied my old ornaments in honour of the holidays.</p><p>“Hawk was speaking about other spirits.”</p><p>He squinted his eyes suspiciously:</p><p>“Are you guarding that door?”</p><p>I observed that there was no real Door in the House, only Doorways, Archways and other remarkable Porticos, and that it was exactly how the House was supposed to be, since the Tides needed to follow their natural Course. He seemed to understand the wisdom in this, for he smiled and nodded as if he had always known it. I added that I hadn’t seen a hawk in at least a year now, and the last time had been near the Faun’s Statue, which was a long way from here. Meanwhile, Matthew had reached some sort of conclusion it seemed, and it was one that made him rather angry.</p><p>“I mean to walk through, so please step aside. You’re blocking the view, and I need to see...”</p><p>He pushed forward, making the Ghost stumbled, and as we stepped inside the next Hall, it suddenly brightened, the light condensing into something more solid to illuminate the most unusual space I had seen in a long while.</p><p> </p><p>I wish you could see this Hall, Sarah, but at the same time I can’t recommend actually going there. I doubt that it stayed where it was since I’ve left it, anyway. It didn’t feel like the sort of place to be visited twice.</p><p>The Hall was vast, huge even, so much that I couldn't locate the next Doorway. Its walls were made of red porphyry, and in the light they produced a dark glow that enveloped everything and gave one the impression that the atmosphere was solidifying. It was hard to tell where the light itself came from, since all the windows were blocked like they had been in the Corridors of Echoes: there were shadows where there should have been light, and light when you only expected shadows. Broken tiles covered the floor, in a black and white pattern also reminiscent of the Corridors, but in a distorted fashion: it was perhaps what the Corridors would have looked like it they had been drawn by a raving artist with no sense of perspective. Despite it all, the room was bathed in terrible beauty.</p><p>There were Statues in there, but all Faceless, the ambient colouring making it difficult to tell if they were marbles like the others, or porphyry too. From afar I had thought I recognized some of the figures, the way I could have found a likeness on a family picture. But the more I went forward, the more I was forced to amend that impression, for their features were all coarse and obviously unfinished. They were arranged across the room in an omega pattern, as if waiting to perform some sort of ceremony. No attention was paid to the unexpected visitor, and I tried to ignore them as they ignored me.</p><p>Two empty onyx Apses opened at the far end of the Hall, though from where I stood it looked as if they were actually right in the middle of it, eerie and inviting. At first I had thought them to be Doorways, but that sort of opacity could only been found in minerals and dead stars.</p><p>I heard footsteps behind me. They sounded like the drops of water falling into the pond of the Thousandth Vestibule.</p><p>It was the Ghost. He still had that confident expression, but his eyes were a bit empty.</p><p>“To feel at home somewhere is the most precious thing in the world, don’t you agree?” he said in a hollow voice.</p><p>I was very tired. I had walked for a long time.</p><p>“What was your name again?”</p><p>Then, I think I slept.”</p><p>*</p><p>Sarah took a long, deep breath, trying to calm down. It was a tape, this was all recorded, past, and if the tale was being told it meant it was over. Still, it was the same feeling she had when listening to witness statements: the impression that the crime was still happening, that they were all in the middle of it and she was standing there, doing nothing.</p><p>The voice on the tape had been different. It wasn’t Piranesi’s, and it wasn’t Matthew, and maybe it was the echo but she was beginning to really feel that last cup of coffee and what if she couldn’t find him?</p><p>*</p><p>“When I woke up, my phone was saying it was February 23<sup>rd,</sup>, when I knew it couldn’t be. I was neither hungry not thirsty, and my food was unspoiled. It was as if no time had passed. I should have been worried by the fact, but I was concerned with a more pressing matter. Sometimes, when my slumber has been very deep, there is a sort of hesitation when I regain conscience. It’s like flipping a coin: for a moment, I’m unsure who will open his eyes, Matthew or Piranesi. And though I know very well it’s always both, it always worries me a bit. There, it felt like the coin was stuck in the air, waiting for some mysterious signal and refusing to fall. I can’t describe the sensation to you, not really. But imagine going on a long hike hopping on one leg: it won’t be the same, but the pain and ridicule of the experience are at least a hint.</p><p>It was difficult to look for an exit in such circumstances, but I – Piranesi, then Matthew, then Piranesi again – had to find a Doorway, preferably the one I came in through, and that’s what I set up to do. I can’t tell you how long it took me, but when I finally discovered an Arch, it was entirely blocked by rocks, huge chunks of marble that seemed to belong to the Statues of the Lower Halls, those rare Giants I sometimes glimpsed when diving to collect shells.</p><p>I then realized I was facing the wall into which the black Apses were sculpted. I was at the wrong end of the room: despondency washed over me, and all I wanted to do was to sit down in defeat and pray for the coin to fall, for my head to stop hurting. But someone spoke to me.</p><p>“Come on, it’s 10:10 a.m.”</p><p>The Ghost had come back, and he was gesturing for me to join him. It took a while to do so, though he was only standing a few yards away from me.</p><p>This is when he showed me the Trees.</p><p>The Trees are an astonishing Creation, and I think perhaps this is why the moment my eyes fell on them, the coin flipped for good, and their image went to Piranesi. I probably need to revise my opinion of this new Ghost, for I am very grateful to him to have allowed me to see such a wonder. I think perhaps he knew what he was doing for once, and even if he didn’t, it was still an act of generosity. To pretend not to be haunted is after all a feeling I can sympathize with.”</p><p>*</p><p>She took advantage of the silence that followed to clear her thoughts. The date was indeed wrong: it was only the 19<sup>th</sup>. The phone could have malfunctioned, but still, it was intriguing (more than it was worrying, she insisted). And she couldn't help but notice that last section had sounded more like Matthew than most of the other recordings. It wasn’t unusual for her to get that feeling: variations were only natural, if you thought about it, and she knew for a fact that at work she had a voice for culprits and a voice for victims, depending on which side she was working with. The distinction was perhaps clearer with Matthew and Piranesi than it was with other people, but the more time she spent with him, the more she was able to hear it elsewhere: in her boss’s voice, whenever he talked about that new task force he wanted to launch to investigate cold cases in the northern districts, in her mother’s, when she told her she was worried about her. In the tapes, the speaker seemed to depend on what was needed at this or that point of the story, and it opened new perspectives to her.</p><p>*</p><p>When he started again, it was unmistakably with Piranesi’s voice.</p><p>“The Trees are one of the most beautiful things I have seen in the House. From afar, they look like the most natural Trees in the world. Perhaps too natural, in fact, in their sober greens and quiet sway. It was quite a sight, those huge pines suddenly grown in the middle of the Hall, so tall but never quite reaching a ceiling that faded into darkness. I could smell them – a fresh, acid scent, and next to me the Ghost was breathing in with a satisfied smile. Even from afar I could see the millions needles on their branches as clearly as if I had been studying them with a magnifying glass, and their multitude was threatening to overwhelm me when the Ghost began to head toward them.</p><p>I followed through, and as I walked, something strange happened. The Hall changed: the walls grew gradually redder, and they gained texture, until the matt porphyry evoked the dark waters of velvet. There was a soft wind moving them, passing through the room and into the Trees like it was only a Corridor now, not a place where anyone might want to stop. As we drew closer, the Trees changed, too. What I had believed to be vegetal turned out to be mineral, a crafted object coloured only by the peculiar lights of the Hall. They were sculpted in marble, thin and tortured like a Bernini’s work, the distorted fingers of Daphne turning into laurel leafs. Maybe this Ghost had a taste for the baroque.</p><p>I stood in awe, examining the branches, the incredible care that had gone into fashioning the needles, and while I was doing so, the Ghost was still moving forward.</p><p>Sarah, you have to trust me here. You have to trust that I didn’t follow the Ghost and traversed the Trees. For a second, I thought that I might. But no. It seemed to me that the Trees were a thing to be contemplated from afar, like most wonders of the House. I am not from the House and I don’t belong there because no one does, but it doesn’t mean I have to disappear again. This Ghost thought he must. And for that, I pity him.</p><p>When he was almost touching them, he turned to me, and our eyes met. I could see from the way his hair was slightly moved that the breeze I was feeling came from behind the Trees. Slowly, he raised his hand, and gave me a thumbs-up. He was still smiling, but something in his eyes, I believe, was screaming for help. He walked into the woods. The world seemed to pause.</p><p>And then the Ghost and the Trees were gone, and I was standing in front of the entrance, the Corridors of Echoes extending for miles in the distance.”</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Golden Light in the Fifty-Second Western Hall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The last tape came the next day. She wasn’t expecting it so soon, in fact she wasn’t even expecting it at all : she had assumed Piranesi would walk back from that last Hall. She had already made plans to meet him halfway : it seemed necessary. But when she stepped into the Minotaur’s room, there it was, waiting for her next to a plastic box full of colourful shells. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to travel today.</p><p>*</p><p>“Sarah, it is February 24<sup>th</sup> (though I still don’t believe that), and I am finally heading home. I didn’t think I would need to record anything else – after all, the rooms on my way back were going to look the same. Only they didn't, not exactly.</p><p>When I reached the Thousandth Vestibule again, it had changed. The pond was gone, Sarah, entirely gone: only a large hole in the floor remained, that mirrored the gap in the ceiling almost perfectly. Water was still falling down, but it was cascading now, the flow much more powerful with nothing to stop it. I tried to see where it was going, but the Lower Floor was inscrutable and full of long shadows.</p><p>What I can’t explain is how I seem to have travelled back so far in just the course of one day. It doesn’t make any sense: from the First Vestibule to the One-Thousand-and-Twenty-Sixth (I’m still unsure of the number), it’s normally a three-days walk.</p><p>Something else happened. I’m not quite sure what.</p><p>But it was the Ghost again. I thought I had seen the last of him, and I was mistaken. Like the Prophet, he keeps reappearing through the cracks every time I think I am done with him.</p><p>It was quite a relief to find myself back in the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Hall, because it meant I had only a few hours to walk before deciding where I wanted to go next At this point, it wasn’t clear to me what I would do: the encounters with the Ghost had troubled me, and I felt like perhaps I needed to stay in familiar Vestibules for a while and talk a bit to the Dead, in order to comfort myself.</p><p>I was progressing carefully through the dark Hall, my torch creating shadows through Statues I had examined a few days before. It was close to midnight, perhaps even one or two in the morning – I admit I trusted neither my phone nor my sense of time then. And then, one of the Statues moved under the light, and came to face me.</p><p>It was beginning to look like the ghost stories children tell each other around a fire, the ones in which the hero is the person being haunted.</p><p>It was him again: the wide, dark eyes, the pale face on which the light created all sorts of unnatural angles, like a broken reflection. His expression was cold, determined.</p><p>“Richard,” he said abruptly, but I couldn’t understand if it was supposed to be a statement or a question.</p><p>I didn’t say anything. I had already introduced myself to him twice, and it wouldn’t have done any good to repeat myself. The Other Ghost quickly assessed me – I don’t think he spared me more than a glance – and came to a decision.</p><p>“Follow me,” he said with some authority. “It’s almost time.”</p><p>This Ghost was more business-like than his counterparts, or rather he looked like he wished he had been on a mission. Part of me instantly disliked him, for the way he spoke reminded me of the Other. Still, I was curious, and he was going in the same direction as me, so I did as I was told.</p><p>As we passed through the colonies of gulls of the Eighty-Eighth Hall, and stumbled through the rubbles of the Seventy-Eighth Vestibule, he barely looked around, focused on reaching the next room as quickly as he could. He was walking ahead, not paying me much mind, but I heard him mutter on several occasions:</p><p>“I’m in the wrong house. I’m in the wrong house.”</p><p>And though those words sounded terrifying to me, he didn’t seem to feel them at all, as if it was only a statement he needed to make to close the case of the House.</p><p>He only stopped when we entered the Fifty-Second Western Hall. It was late by then, I could feel it in my bones. I didn’t expect to find the Golden Light I had observed in this Hall in the past at such an hour, and so I was surprised to see the room was still Illuminated in the most remarkable way. During the day, it had seemed like the Light was coming from the Eastern Wall of the room, through a mean I hadn’t been able to determine. But now I could see, in the dark of night, that the Wall was reflecting the Light that came from outside, specifically from the Window that faced it and showed a large portion of the Sky.</p><p>“It’s there,” the Other Ghost said, pointing at the Window. “Go and look.”</p><p>I approached the Window carefully. As customary in the House, the Night Sky was dark blue, and gave an impression of flatness, as if it had no real depth to speak of. What was extraordinary, on the other hand, was how bright this region was. A long way above our heads, among the fixed Stars one would expect to find in this section of the House, I saw the fiery tail of a comet, spread across the Sky in an orange trail. I followed it all the way to the comet itself, a giant, golden orb shrouded in a blaze of flames: it seemed to have been stopped in its course, and simply hung there, immobile, and burning so bright that it lighted the room as if it was day again.</p><p>“I can’t manage to catch her,” the Ghost whispered, and I started because I hadn’t heard him approach.</p><p>We both watched in silence for a moment. I had thought the Trees the most wonderful thing I would discover during this trip, but I was mistaken. The orb looked millions of years away from us, but we could tell that it was still burning, still shining across space and time to reach our eyes. It was beautiful. I quickly recited a prayer to the House, and as I spoke I felt tears dripping from my chin and along my neck.</p><p>It isn’t an easy sensation to describe. The Sky of the House isn’t made for comets. It is vast and foreign, and nothing ever troubles it. But I knew this, the fire in the midnight blue landscape, was something from here, forever burning and returning to it. I felt all the sadness in the world looking at it, as if I was facing a great, ancient tragedy, and part of it came from the fact that I recognized myself in its tail, or rather the person I would have kept on being, trapped here without knowledge of who Matthew Rose Sorensen was. But the comet itself… The comet itself brought up tears of joy.</p><p>I glanced at the Ghost, who had not moved from my side, and saw his eyes were dry. The moment didn’t allow for rational thought, but now that I’m telling you all this, I think perhaps he had brought me here so that I could cry for him. He certainly couldn’t. His marble face drew me away from the celestial spectacle. I took a step back, looked through my bag for a handkerchief. And just when I was wiping my Tears away, I felt I was ready to come home. The Knowledge descended on me all at once. It only seemed natural now; I was already on my way back, after all.</p><p>I told “Richard” as much, and it seemed to give him pause. For a moment I almost thought he was thinking about doing the same – but I’m not so sure now. I can hear my own voice presenting the idea, and it doesn’t feel right. It feels… do you know, Matthew’s intonation, the thing I do and that you’ve noticed whenever people, my mother, ask me if I’m alright. And of course, what can you say. “I’m fine”. It’s the same tone now, Sarah. It sounds like I’m lying. I suppose no one stands a chance against you in an interrogation.</p><p>To be honest, I wish you could have met him. I feel like it would have helped: you’re good at finding things, and he seemed so lost. But I guess we can’t always count on investigators coming our way; it was just me then. God, the look on his face. He looked like someone who’s coming home early only to discover his house has burned to the ground. It made me worry about everyone – everyone I had left behind. So here I am now, almost at the door of the Thirty-Third Hall, recording this for you and me both. I wonder what you will have to say about it (I can already hear you talk of open cases and missing persons).</p><p> </p><p>When I walked away, leaving him alone in the Fifty-Second Hall, bathed in the comet’s Golden Light, the Ghost said:</p><p>“You’re going the wrong way.”</p><p>But he didn’t know what he was saying. It is true that I wasn’t going the way ghosts usually go. It is fine. I know who I am coming back to.”</p>
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